Late in the evening of Oct. 23, 2020, on the dream trip to New York City he had wanted to take since seeing a Spider-Man film as a child, my son bought a homeless man a sandwich. A 20-year-old sophomore film student from Indiana University on a $12/day budget, he did what he knew was right: love and help others with whatever resources he had available to him.
Three hours later, he would be lying on the front steps of a Brooklyn Airbnb taking his last breath after an unidentified gunman ambushed and shot him.
I know parents are biased toward their children, but objectively, Ethan was a special soul. In high school, he was a triple honors graduate and charter member of the Mayor’s Youth Leadership Council of Indianapolis, an athlete, musician, writer for the school paper and club founder. During the summer, he did mission work in Rwanda with an organization that houses and educates abandoned children.
Ethan received impressive scholarship offers from top universities and studied in Jerusalem for a term to better understand people, culture, religion and ethnic conflict. The trip solidified his faith and gave him a much deeper understanding of the world we all must share. It was his dream to attend New York University to study literature with hopes of maybe one day becoming a college professor.
While he loved the architecture and energy of your city, what Ethan wanted to experience most were the people. Because my son loved people, strangers weren’t strangers; they were future friends.
This is why his ambush and murder by a stranger is even more painful for our family.
Police believe our son’s killer mistook him and his friends for rival gang members. They were instead just a group of Midwestern boys on their first trip to see “the greatest city in the world.” If he had been given the chance, without question Ethan would have embraced his would-be killer, asked his name and hung out on those same steps with him swapping stories deep into the night.
In the aftermath of Ethan’s murder, the district attorney’s office and the task force assigned to the case have treated us very well. The assistant district attorney, without fail, has called me weekly for almost 11 months now with updates, even when there is little to report.
All said, New Yorkers have treated us exceptionally kindly, supporting us with letters, donations and warm words of sympathy.
One man we don’t know set up a memorial for Ethan on the street where he died. Another offered an entire floor of his flat as a home base should we ever need to visit to deal with court proceedings or other business. We will be forever indebted to these caring New Yorkers, among many others.
And in seeing Eric Adams elected mayor, we are encouraged to learn the people of New York have prioritized your need to begin tackling the city’s crime problem head on.
If what Martin Luther King Jr. said is true, that accepting evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it, then it is crucial for fresh leadership to stop tolerating the violent crime that is so insidiously weaving itself into the tapestry of your great city.
And this family pleads for you to lead the way in taking the bold steps necessary to avoid the ruin that will no doubt be wrought onto more innocent victims and their families if nothing is done to adequately protect others like Ethan.
When Ethan was in the fourth grade, his school bus driver called and told me and my wife that our son had been in an altercation. We were shocked. When questioned why, Ethan gave his childlike response with the moral clarity of someone much older than he. Some backseat bus bully types had been picking on another student for some time, and Ethan was over it. In his own words: “I was tired of watching her be marginalized and decided someone needed to do something about it.”
Ethan reminded us that day that it’s often the uncomfortable thing to do that is the right thing to do. And that sometimes things don’t get better until someone does something about it.
While it is too late to save our child, perhaps it’s not too late to save your own. All it takes is for someone to do something.
Jason R. Williams is a PLTW master teacher and Verizon innovative educator at MSD of Perry Township in Indianapolis.
